Philip Thomas

Why Imperial College’s REACT study is so problematic

Image: Getty

There was very gloomy news this week. ‘Coronavirus infections are not falling in England, latest REACT findings show,’ said a press release from Imperial College. It was widely covered in the press in this vein: Covid levels ‘may even have risen’ since the latest lockdown, BBC news reported. This reignited fears that further tighter lockdown measures might be needed to contain it. It was all a result of Imperial College’s latest REACT study of Covid-19 infections, a massive study of 143,000 people and one of the biggest Covid surveys around. So its findings – and talk of rising cases – were taken very seriously. And understandably so. 

The study’s author, moreover, was adamant that the virus has had a resurgence. ‘Across this round of the study we’ve seen that the number of infected people has remained high and we have no good evidence that infections are falling in England,’ Professor Steven Riley said.

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